If you get a picture on the preview but the printer doesn't print, that points to a likely driver problem because that Epson preview window is showing you what the driver received (and is about to print).  If what you see in the Epson print preview doesn't print, then your driver just lied to you: didn't print what it said it was about to print.

Can you post a screenshot of the main window showing the live view with the Printers and Settings tab open so I can see the printer settings?  That way I can replicate all your settings and try to print on my 8550.

Why 2025 would work and the 2026 version doesn't: I can't answer that.  The 2026 version will be sending slightly different (better) pixel data but I don't know why that would affect it.  I guess it's also possible that the 2026.100 bug corrupted some memory that isn't being used by 2025.105: to test that, reboot your machine and try the 2026 version again.  If you still have a problem, you can hold the Shift key, click the "Properties" button to open the printer driver, set up your media type, size, etc. in the driver, click OK, and try to print after doing that (in case some settings got corrupted).

Regards,
Mike

I've been developing Qimage for 28 years and I see anti-virus interference on occasion, especially from poorly written AV programs (PrevX, BitDefender, and Norton come to mind!).  Windows Defender is not a problem so if that's all you have, it isn't that.

And yes, like I said, I did make something of your message: that usually appears when the plug-in is trying to access a file and can't for some reason, hence what I suggested.

You didn't mention it so I'll assume you didn't make the mistake I pointed out: installing under an administrator account and then switching to a different account to run Qimage.  The only other thing that I can suggest is uninstalling and reinstalling Lightroom, then reinstalling Qimage so it will renew the plug-in.

Mike

I do have a picture in the print preview window but it still feeds the paper straight through. When I uninstall the latest version and reinstall 2025 everything works fine.

Mike, I'm using Windows Defender and looking for a way to disable it.  I've been in the AV business for over 25 years and never had an AV product disrupt a program from running. Do you make anything out of the message that I attached? 

I tested 2026.101 extensively on the 8550 so I think you have an issue on your end.  Possibly corrupt printer settings or a printer/driver issue.  Have you tried printing with the print preview turned on in the driver to see if that preview also looks blank?

Regards,
Mike

It still doesn't work. 

No issues when testing on multiple machines.

Latest Lightroom Classic 14.4.

There have been no changes to the Lightroom plug-in.  The error you are getting is usually a permissions error either caused by trying to install Qimage as administrator and later using it on a limited account... or by anti-virus software interference.  The only other thing I can think of is to temporarily disable your anti-virus to see if the problem goes away and if it does, use an exclusion.

Regards,
Mike

Mike,

I'm getting the same error when I try to select Qimage Ultimate plug-in from Lightroom.

I did reinstall Qimage Ultimate.

Andy

It'll be visible in any photos with a lot of fine detail but most visible in tight crops or low res photos that get upsampled during printing.  DFS was already quite good so the difference won't be night and day but prints should just seem more crisp in general.

Example: I have an 8 panel 30x20 inch print from my Epson 8550 from a single 8MP photo.  That's about 96 PPI that gets upsampled to 600 PPI.  You can easily see DFS2 and the new Forge interpolation produce better fine details from normal standing/viewing distance.

Regards,
Mike

In which prints should "DFSv2: Second-generation Deep Focus Sharpening for even greater clarity."  most visible?

Is it about low DPI images or more general?